MOBILE & THE CLOUDa perfect match

Patrick Foley

ISV Architect Evangelist

Microsoft Corporation

Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE)

Patrick.Foley@microsoft.com

http://patrickfoley.com

@patrickfoley

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

phone home

most non-trivial mobile apps require a back-end

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

what do you need from back-end?

• support all phone types– plus tablet and browser

– don’t forget feature phones

• rapid development

• performance and scalability

• reliability

• security– identity management

– connect with existing / internal systems

• cheap

ENTER THE CLOUDbut what is it?

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

Cloud = The Internet

• websites

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

– Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM Online, BPOS/Office365, …

– countless other enterprise and consumer SaaSISVs

– often – but not always – browser-based

• store your data “in the cloud”

– Skydrive, Dropbox, Mozy, Nasuni, …

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

Cloud = Utility Computing

• implies back-end

• easy to add computing power

• easy to subtract computing power

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

history: ancient times

• physical boxes

• new workload? new server

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

history: recent times

• virtual machines

– 1 physical box can house multiple (2, 10, 100,

…) “virtual” computers (VMs)

• new workload? new VM

• standardized physical hardware

– VMs look just like physical computers to

application software

Virtualized Environment

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

benefits of server virtualization

• cost

– server consolidation/improved utilization

• manageability

– more flexible HA/DR scenarios

• hosters have used VMs for many years

• sidebar: multiple types of virtualization

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

along comes Amazon

• one of the biggest, best ecommerce sites

• demand peaks at holidays

• “Can we sell our excess capacity?”

• the (public) cloud is born

– August 2006 beta, October 2008 “release”

December December

Co

mp

ute

Req

uir

ed

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

what’s different?• no long-term contract

• pay in 1-hour increments

• launch new compute capacity (VM’s) in minutes– even by “remote control” (API)

• implications– experiment cheaply

– handle peaks

– level playing field

– CapEx to OpEx

– develop for HUGE scale• assuming you already know how to write stateless web apps

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

the market grows

• Google

• Microsoft

• Rackspace and other “traditional” hosters

• VMWare

• Salesforce.com

• Heroku.com

• “Me too!”

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

economies of scale

• Microsoft and Google are investing billions each year in

data center capacity

• whitepaper: massive TCO savings in public vs private

– 100 servers: cost prohibitive

– 1000 servers: 10 times the cost of a public cloud

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

example: sxp

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

Private(On-Premise)

Storage

Server HW

Networking

Servers

Databases

Virtualization

Runtimes

Applications

Security & Integration

Cu

sto

me

r m

anag

es

increasing complexity

different types of clouds

SaaS

Software as a Service (Office365, salesforce.com, …)

• Customer-ready

• Often self-service

• “Just use it”

• Don’t care about guest

OS

• Assumed to be scalable

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service (Amazon, rackspace, VMWare, partners)

• Operations-ready

• Can be self-service

• “VMs on demand”

• Customer must manage guest

OS

• Great if you already know how

to write scalable apps or if you

want to run legacy apps

PaaS

Platform as a Service (Microsoft, Google, Salesforce)

• Developer-ready

• Mostly self-service

• “Write a chunk of code”

• Don’t have to manage

guest OS

• Easy to scale (stateless

web apps by default)

• Easy to operate / HA

DR built in

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

cloud computing taxonomythe sweet spot for a

mobile app back-end

Traditional IT

Storage

Servers

Networking

O/S

Middleware

Virtualization

Data

Applications

Runtime/DB

Custo

mer

manag

es

IaaS

Storage

Servers

Networking

O/S

Middleware

Virtualization

Data

Applications

Runtime/DB

Manag

ed b

y v

endor

Custo

mer

manag

es

Custo

mer

manages

PaaS

Manag

ed b

y v

endor

Storage

Servers

Networking

O/S

Middleware

Virtualization

Applications

Runtime/DB

Data

SaaS

Manag

ed b

y v

endor

Storage

Servers

Networking

O/S

Middleware

Virtualization

Applications

Runtime/DB

Data

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

so does cloud work for mobile?

• support all phone types: YES, via RESTful APIs and pages– plus tablet and browser: YES

– don’t forget feature phones: YES

• rapid development: YES, in various ways (e.g., deployment)

• performance and scalability: YES, easy to add resources

• reliability: YES, built-in or easy-to-add HA

• security: YES, data centers follow consistent best practices– identity management: more and more

– connect with existing / internal systems: more and more

• cheap: YES, a lot cheaper than self-hosting

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

scenarios• mobile app as isolated business

– productivity

– game

– collaboration/social

• expanding existing solution with mobile– consumer/soho

– enterprise/smb

• custom corporate mobile solution

• marketing-based solution

• quick-n-dirty – don’t overlook html and jQuerymobile

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

cloud architecture questions

• how will you be managing identity?

• how will you partition data for customers?

• do you need relational storage or is “no SQL” a better fit?

• how will you monitor usage? determine scalability factors?

• do you need to connect through corporate firewall?

• do you need to expose/sync with internal data?

• are you migrating from on-prem/self-hosted

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

Windows Azure: cloud for mobile

• supports all mobile platforms

• best developer tools

• PaaS

• trivial to scale

• HA/DR

• enables single sign-on

• DevOp

• “You can pull Azure from my cold, dead fingers”- Matt Spradley, founder of Impirus and Vignature

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

get started

• free Windows Azure pass – 30 days, no

credit card required

– windowsazurepass.com with promo code

PFOLEY

• free with MSDN – no time limit

• free Cloud Essentials for Microsoft

partners – no time limit

• see azure.com for more offers

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

Microsoft Platform Ready

• www.MicrosoftPlatformReady.com

• step-by-step resources for Windows Azure and Windows

Phone for partners (startup? check out bizspark.com)

• no-cost technical support

• testing benefits for partner competencies

• visibility: stand up and be counted

MOBILE & THE CLOUD

questions?

Patrick Foley

ISV Architect Evangelist

Microsoft Corporation

Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE)

Patrick.Foley@microsoft.com

http://patrickfoley.com

@patrickfoley